Because March 8 - International Women's Day - falls on a Sunday this year, several of us preached on Biblical women today. I took a chance and talked about The Unnamed Concubine in Judges 19.It was perhaps the first time the words "hell-raisers" and "raped her repeatedly" were spoken in our sanctuary. The sermon is below. I wish I could digitally give each of you a piece of burlap to finger while you read it.
“My God, My God Why Have You Forsaken Her?”
Judges 19
This is a very disturbing story that most of us never realized was in the Bible. When people refer to the importance of getting back to “Biblical Family Values,” this is not what they mean. Here we have:
- A woman who has left her husband and he doesn’t go after her for four months
- A “concubine”[1] who is not the same as a “wife” but she is not only legally connected to the husband; she is essentially his property. Concubines were usually acquired because they were slaves bought at auction or the spoils of war. It’s clear that the “husband” was considerably older than the concubine who is called a “girl” throughout this story.[2]
- This concubine had “quarreled” with her husband but the Hebrew word here is a little racier. It literally says that she “played the harlot”[3] against him - whatever that means exactly.
- The concubine’s father seemed to prefer his “son-in-law” to his own daughter, probably because he had been paid money for the daughter and he wanted to ensure that his client was happy.
We don’t know why the concubine left.
- Maybe their “quarrel” was over another man.[4]
- Maybe she – a young girl – simply didn’t like this older man to whom she’d been given.
- Maybe the problem was that they were simply too different:
o He was a Levite from the north. She was from Bethlehem in the south.
o He was from a priestly tribe. She was clearly a person of little power and status.
The amazing thing, though, was that she left him. This was a culture which allowed men to initiate divorce by simply saying “I divorce you” three times. But this was never an option for women. They were not allowed to leave.
But here we find one of the rare instances in scripture when the woman left the man.
Another reason that this is not a noble story of wholesome family values involves hospitality – or the lack of it. Hospitality, in this story, is just for men.
Verse 6 makes it plain that the men were eating and drinking alone – without the concubine. The girl’s father is concerned only with his son-in-law’s well-being.
The concubine’s husband stayed for three days. Then he stayed for a fourth day. He stayed for a fifth day, eating and drinking all day long. But the concubine’s husband didn’t want to stay another night.
It didn’t matter that it was too late in the day to start out on such a long journey home. It didn’t matter that it would be dangerous for a woman to travel at night – even with her husband.
Ironically, the husband didn’t want to stop in Jebus/Jerusalem because those people were foreigners and might not treat them well. He decided to keep traveling until they got to Gibeah where the people were Israelites like they were. But no one in Gibeah offered them shelter . . . until an old man coming in from a long day in the fields saw them in the city square and invited them into his home.
The old man brought them in, allowed them to wash up and eat and drink. But while they were eating, the local rabble rousers – “a perverse lot” – surrounded the old man’s house, banged on the door, and demanded that the Levite come out so that they may “know” him.[5]
For the record, this was not about homosexuality. This was about hospitality towards strangers – or a lack of it. The most bigoted locals “welcome” newcomers into town by “treating them like women” – to teach them a lesson, to remind them who is in power in that town and who is not.
Again, in a shocking display of perverse family values, the old man who lives in the house yells out the window that this is no way to treat his male guest, but here are his virgin daughter and a concubine to do whatever you want to do with them.
Somehow, the concubine alone is shoved outside where she is abused so violently throughout the night that at dawn, she stumbles back to the old man’s door. And in one of the most poignant and horrible details of this story, her hands are on the threshold of the door. She was still trying to get back in.
We can assume that the two men enjoyed their meal and then slept through the night.
We can completely understand why this concubine would leave her husband in the first place if he always treated her the way she was treated that morning: “Get up!” he said. “Time to hit the road.”
But she was dead – or almost dead. He dumped her onto one of the donkeys and took her home. And then, in a final act of horror, he cut her into twelve pieces and sent one part to each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
And as he handed his messengers each a piece of his concubine, he commanded them to tell the 12 tribes of Israel: Has such a thing ever happened since we left Egypt? Discuss.
Judges 19
This is a very disturbing story that most of us never realized was in the Bible. When people refer to the importance of getting back to “Biblical Family Values,” this is not what they mean. Here we have:
- A woman who has left her husband and he doesn’t go after her for four months
- A “concubine”[1] who is not the same as a “wife” but she is not only legally connected to the husband; she is essentially his property. Concubines were usually acquired because they were slaves bought at auction or the spoils of war. It’s clear that the “husband” was considerably older than the concubine who is called a “girl” throughout this story.[2]
- This concubine had “quarreled” with her husband but the Hebrew word here is a little racier. It literally says that she “played the harlot”[3] against him - whatever that means exactly.
- The concubine’s father seemed to prefer his “son-in-law” to his own daughter, probably because he had been paid money for the daughter and he wanted to ensure that his client was happy.
We don’t know why the concubine left.
- Maybe their “quarrel” was over another man.[4]
- Maybe she – a young girl – simply didn’t like this older man to whom she’d been given.
- Maybe the problem was that they were simply too different:
o He was a Levite from the north. She was from Bethlehem in the south.
o He was from a priestly tribe. She was clearly a person of little power and status.
The amazing thing, though, was that she left him. This was a culture which allowed men to initiate divorce by simply saying “I divorce you” three times. But this was never an option for women. They were not allowed to leave.
But here we find one of the rare instances in scripture when the woman left the man.
Another reason that this is not a noble story of wholesome family values involves hospitality – or the lack of it. Hospitality, in this story, is just for men.
Verse 6 makes it plain that the men were eating and drinking alone – without the concubine. The girl’s father is concerned only with his son-in-law’s well-being.
The concubine’s husband stayed for three days. Then he stayed for a fourth day. He stayed for a fifth day, eating and drinking all day long. But the concubine’s husband didn’t want to stay another night.
It didn’t matter that it was too late in the day to start out on such a long journey home. It didn’t matter that it would be dangerous for a woman to travel at night – even with her husband.
Ironically, the husband didn’t want to stop in Jebus/Jerusalem because those people were foreigners and might not treat them well. He decided to keep traveling until they got to Gibeah where the people were Israelites like they were. But no one in Gibeah offered them shelter . . . until an old man coming in from a long day in the fields saw them in the city square and invited them into his home.
The old man brought them in, allowed them to wash up and eat and drink. But while they were eating, the local rabble rousers – “a perverse lot” – surrounded the old man’s house, banged on the door, and demanded that the Levite come out so that they may “know” him.[5]
For the record, this was not about homosexuality. This was about hospitality towards strangers – or a lack of it. The most bigoted locals “welcome” newcomers into town by “treating them like women” – to teach them a lesson, to remind them who is in power in that town and who is not.
Again, in a shocking display of perverse family values, the old man who lives in the house yells out the window that this is no way to treat his male guest, but here are his virgin daughter and a concubine to do whatever you want to do with them.
Somehow, the concubine alone is shoved outside where she is abused so violently throughout the night that at dawn, she stumbles back to the old man’s door. And in one of the most poignant and horrible details of this story, her hands are on the threshold of the door. She was still trying to get back in.
We can assume that the two men enjoyed their meal and then slept through the night.
We can completely understand why this concubine would leave her husband in the first place if he always treated her the way she was treated that morning: “Get up!” he said. “Time to hit the road.”
But she was dead – or almost dead. He dumped her onto one of the donkeys and took her home. And then, in a final act of horror, he cut her into twelve pieces and sent one part to each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
And as he handed his messengers each a piece of his concubine, he commanded them to tell the 12 tribes of Israel: Has such a thing ever happened since we left Egypt? Discuss.
Why in the world is this story in the Bible?
- To stir up the nations? To show reasons why there must be revenge? Domination? (Maybe)
- To point out what happens when you don’t have a king? This would be the party line of the monarchists.[6]
But I would like to think that this story is in the Bible because God wants us to remember how not to treat each other, and especially, how not to treat women or anyone with no power.
Today is International Women’s Day – a day set aside by the United Nations but first started in 1911 by women in Great Britain to recognize the achievements and needs of women.[7] It is the perfect day to remember the concubine of Judges 19. Notice that we never hear her name. In fact, she never even speaks a word. But this is a person who deserves to be remembered.
In just five more weeks, we will hear the story of women who found an empty tomb on the first day of the week after another torturous death, and even 1500 years after the death of the unnamed concubine, they would not be considered reliable witnesses because of their gender.
And today, 2000 years after the tomb was found empty, women still find themselves forsaken in many places.
In 1985, Margaret Atwood wrote a bestselling novel called The Handmaid’s Tale about a society run by fundamentalist Christians who imposed terrible restrictions upon the women of “Gilead” – a republic formerly known as the United States. Young, fertile women were taken as concubines for the powerful men in charge and they lost everything: their freedom, their privacy, and even their names.
And although this book is fiction, Margaret Atwood wrote in the introduction that all the indignities she included were actually occurring somewhere in the world at the time she wrote the book.
And the indignities and horrors continue.
There is an organization called the International Justice Mission that does what no other organization does. In the name of Jesus Christ, they work through international investigators, lawyers and social workers to relieve victims, hold perpetrators accountable, and offer aftercare for those who’ve been abused.[8]
Their website tells the story of Panida – a 14 year old girl from Thailand who was kidnapped by a man she thought was going to help her find a job to support her family. Instead she was trafficked to Malaysia where she was locked in a room, awaiting the most horrible of fates. But before anything further could happen to her, Malaysian police – tipped off by International Justice Mission investigators – discovered the brothel where they were keeping Panida and 94 other women and set them free. Panida was returned to her family safely.
This ministry happens because people of faith have taken on the terror of others as their own. Instead of looking away – which is what all of us want to do - they are charging in and liberating those in danger.
Why is this story in the Bible?
Because it shows what happens when we don’t care. It reminds us that horrible violence is not just some ancient practice inflicted upon the weak thousands of years ago.
And we are also reminded that:
- we follow someone who reached out to women with no power
- we follow someone whose first disciples were men, but it was the women who seemed to “get it” first …
o There was Mary, the sister of Martha, who sat at Jesus’ feet to learn from him[9]
o There was the woman who anointed Jesus with expensive oil because she believed him when he said he was approaching death. She was anointing him for burial.[10]
o There was the foreign woman who recognized that Jesus was the Messiah before his 12 disciples recognized it, whose daughter was healed because of her faith.[11]
o There was another foreign woman – a Samaritan – whom Jesus met at the well in the middle of the day who also recognized that maybe this man was the Messiah because “he told (her) everything she’d ever done.”[12] Some call her the first evangelist.
If we say we follow this healer, this teacher, this One whom we believe was truly of God, then maybe we will want to re-think how we treat the powerless.
We can do this in practical and spiritual ways:
- On Holy Thursday – the Thursday before Easter – we will remember that – like the concubine was betrayed by her husband and brutally killed – Jesus was betrayed and killed too. We will collect on offering of 30 pieces of silver that night which will go to women who have been betrayed.[13]
- As you came in this morning, you were asked to take a small patch of burlap signifying sackcloth. The Bible speaks of people who are grieving as wearing sackcloth and heaping ashes on their heads as a sign of their profound suffering.[14] These pieces of burlap are rough to the touch. They unravel easily and can be shred with little effort. Please hang onto to these pieces of sackcloth. Put them in your pocket or in your purse. Keep them throughout Lent and when you find them in your pocket, when you touch them say a prayer for those who – at this hour – are held against their will, those who are victims of human trafficking and ask God to bring people to set them free.
We may not know their names. But God knows all their names.
There is hope today.
There is hope because
- we worship a God of life and liberation,
- not a god of death and slavery.
And because this is our God, we have a calling to:
- Bring good news to the oppressed,
- To bind up the brokenhearted,
- To proclaim liberation to the captives,
- And release to the imprisoned.[15]
This is who we are and this is what makes us different from the rest of the world, especially a world that would treat women as property, a world where women and men feel enslaved to a way a life that is the opposite of what God wants for us.
A final story:
When I was buying the burlap to pass out today, I was overwhelmed with the beautiful fabrics in the store where I was searching for burlap. I was in the interior decorating section where people choose fabrics for draperies and upholstery, and the colors were absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never been big on home decorating but what I saw was absolutely breathtaking: beautiful florals and stripes and rich materials. But I couldn’t find the burlap.
“This place has such gorgeous fabric, maybe they don’t even sell burlap.”
I went up to a store clerk and said, “I need some burlap. The roughest burlap you’ve got. I’m thinking ‘sackcloth and ashes.’”
“Wow. Sackcloth and ashes? That’s before your time,” she said. “Actually, that’s before my time too. Come this way.”
And she led my past the velvets and silks and suedes. Through the purples and golds and deep greens. And we came to a wall of bland, rough burlap.
“This is perfect!” I said.
“What’s it for, if I might ask?”
“It’s for church. Something for Lent,” I said.
“So tell me,” she said, “Where does it talk about Lent in the Bible?”
“The word ‘lent’ is not in the Bible. Lent just means ‘a lengthening of days’ and I guess the closest connection is to Jesus temptation in the wilderness for 40 days. We spend 40 days in Lent.”
And then our conversation took a turn.
“Can I tell you something?” she said.
“Sure.”
“My whole life feels like Lent. It feels just like this burlap. You said that we had beautiful fabrics in here but I can’t even appreciate them anymore. They give me no joy.”
Her voice started to crack a little.
“I’m a single mother and I work all the time, and I’m losing touch with my son. He’s a teenager and I have to work all the time – six and a half days a week and we are barely getting by. And my mother is nagging me all the time, telling me everything I’m doing wrong.
And the best thing I’ve got going now is a 15 minute break twice a day when I go out and have a cigarette. So that’s my life. I work and I smoke cigarettes and I worry about my son and I listen to my mother nag.”
Now maybe it’s because I’m almost 53 years old and I don’t care what people think about me as much as I used to, and I’m no longer mortified for people to know I’m a Christian and I will pray with anybody anywhere, but for whatever reason, I put my hand on her shoulder beside the rolls of burlap in the home decorating section of G-Street Fabrics at Bailey’s Crossroads yesterday, and I said, “Let’s pray together.” And we did.
And I asked that God might free her from this stuck place in her life. And that God might protect her son and help her mother give her a break. And I prayed that she would have joy in her life again and be freed from all the things that make her feel trapped. And then I said “Amen.”
And she handed me the burlap and now it’s in your hands.
I declare to you that Tammi the fabric store clerk, and children like Panida, and women like the concubine in the book of Judges are in your and my hands. And God has called us to set them free.
Maybe this is why this story is in the Bible – to stun us into recognizing that the world is not a safe place for many people. And if we are safe in our own little lives, and if we have joy, and if we are free to come and go as we please then we are not only blessed; we are responsible to change the lives of those who do not have these blessings.
We follow Jesus not so we will live easy, trouble-free lives. We follow Jesus because we have been called to take on the troubles of others in the image of this person we call Lord.
Has such a thing like the story of the unnamed concubine ever happened since our people left Egypt? Sadly, it happens all the time.
But we have more to do than merely discuss it. We cannot continue to look away. We are to be the anti-Gibeans. In the name of Jesus, may this be so.
- To stir up the nations? To show reasons why there must be revenge? Domination? (Maybe)
- To point out what happens when you don’t have a king? This would be the party line of the monarchists.[6]
But I would like to think that this story is in the Bible because God wants us to remember how not to treat each other, and especially, how not to treat women or anyone with no power.
Today is International Women’s Day – a day set aside by the United Nations but first started in 1911 by women in Great Britain to recognize the achievements and needs of women.[7] It is the perfect day to remember the concubine of Judges 19. Notice that we never hear her name. In fact, she never even speaks a word. But this is a person who deserves to be remembered.
In just five more weeks, we will hear the story of women who found an empty tomb on the first day of the week after another torturous death, and even 1500 years after the death of the unnamed concubine, they would not be considered reliable witnesses because of their gender.
And today, 2000 years after the tomb was found empty, women still find themselves forsaken in many places.
In 1985, Margaret Atwood wrote a bestselling novel called The Handmaid’s Tale about a society run by fundamentalist Christians who imposed terrible restrictions upon the women of “Gilead” – a republic formerly known as the United States. Young, fertile women were taken as concubines for the powerful men in charge and they lost everything: their freedom, their privacy, and even their names.
And although this book is fiction, Margaret Atwood wrote in the introduction that all the indignities she included were actually occurring somewhere in the world at the time she wrote the book.
And the indignities and horrors continue.
There is an organization called the International Justice Mission that does what no other organization does. In the name of Jesus Christ, they work through international investigators, lawyers and social workers to relieve victims, hold perpetrators accountable, and offer aftercare for those who’ve been abused.[8]
Their website tells the story of Panida – a 14 year old girl from Thailand who was kidnapped by a man she thought was going to help her find a job to support her family. Instead she was trafficked to Malaysia where she was locked in a room, awaiting the most horrible of fates. But before anything further could happen to her, Malaysian police – tipped off by International Justice Mission investigators – discovered the brothel where they were keeping Panida and 94 other women and set them free. Panida was returned to her family safely.
This ministry happens because people of faith have taken on the terror of others as their own. Instead of looking away – which is what all of us want to do - they are charging in and liberating those in danger.
Why is this story in the Bible?
Because it shows what happens when we don’t care. It reminds us that horrible violence is not just some ancient practice inflicted upon the weak thousands of years ago.
And we are also reminded that:
- we follow someone who reached out to women with no power
- we follow someone whose first disciples were men, but it was the women who seemed to “get it” first …
o There was Mary, the sister of Martha, who sat at Jesus’ feet to learn from him[9]
o There was the woman who anointed Jesus with expensive oil because she believed him when he said he was approaching death. She was anointing him for burial.[10]
o There was the foreign woman who recognized that Jesus was the Messiah before his 12 disciples recognized it, whose daughter was healed because of her faith.[11]
o There was another foreign woman – a Samaritan – whom Jesus met at the well in the middle of the day who also recognized that maybe this man was the Messiah because “he told (her) everything she’d ever done.”[12] Some call her the first evangelist.
If we say we follow this healer, this teacher, this One whom we believe was truly of God, then maybe we will want to re-think how we treat the powerless.
We can do this in practical and spiritual ways:
- On Holy Thursday – the Thursday before Easter – we will remember that – like the concubine was betrayed by her husband and brutally killed – Jesus was betrayed and killed too. We will collect on offering of 30 pieces of silver that night which will go to women who have been betrayed.[13]
- As you came in this morning, you were asked to take a small patch of burlap signifying sackcloth. The Bible speaks of people who are grieving as wearing sackcloth and heaping ashes on their heads as a sign of their profound suffering.[14] These pieces of burlap are rough to the touch. They unravel easily and can be shred with little effort. Please hang onto to these pieces of sackcloth. Put them in your pocket or in your purse. Keep them throughout Lent and when you find them in your pocket, when you touch them say a prayer for those who – at this hour – are held against their will, those who are victims of human trafficking and ask God to bring people to set them free.
We may not know their names. But God knows all their names.
There is hope today.
There is hope because
- we worship a God of life and liberation,
- not a god of death and slavery.
And because this is our God, we have a calling to:
- Bring good news to the oppressed,
- To bind up the brokenhearted,
- To proclaim liberation to the captives,
- And release to the imprisoned.[15]
This is who we are and this is what makes us different from the rest of the world, especially a world that would treat women as property, a world where women and men feel enslaved to a way a life that is the opposite of what God wants for us.
A final story:
When I was buying the burlap to pass out today, I was overwhelmed with the beautiful fabrics in the store where I was searching for burlap. I was in the interior decorating section where people choose fabrics for draperies and upholstery, and the colors were absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never been big on home decorating but what I saw was absolutely breathtaking: beautiful florals and stripes and rich materials. But I couldn’t find the burlap.
“This place has such gorgeous fabric, maybe they don’t even sell burlap.”
I went up to a store clerk and said, “I need some burlap. The roughest burlap you’ve got. I’m thinking ‘sackcloth and ashes.’”
“Wow. Sackcloth and ashes? That’s before your time,” she said. “Actually, that’s before my time too. Come this way.”
And she led my past the velvets and silks and suedes. Through the purples and golds and deep greens. And we came to a wall of bland, rough burlap.
“This is perfect!” I said.
“What’s it for, if I might ask?”
“It’s for church. Something for Lent,” I said.
“So tell me,” she said, “Where does it talk about Lent in the Bible?”
“The word ‘lent’ is not in the Bible. Lent just means ‘a lengthening of days’ and I guess the closest connection is to Jesus temptation in the wilderness for 40 days. We spend 40 days in Lent.”
And then our conversation took a turn.
“Can I tell you something?” she said.
“Sure.”
“My whole life feels like Lent. It feels just like this burlap. You said that we had beautiful fabrics in here but I can’t even appreciate them anymore. They give me no joy.”
Her voice started to crack a little.
“I’m a single mother and I work all the time, and I’m losing touch with my son. He’s a teenager and I have to work all the time – six and a half days a week and we are barely getting by. And my mother is nagging me all the time, telling me everything I’m doing wrong.
And the best thing I’ve got going now is a 15 minute break twice a day when I go out and have a cigarette. So that’s my life. I work and I smoke cigarettes and I worry about my son and I listen to my mother nag.”
Now maybe it’s because I’m almost 53 years old and I don’t care what people think about me as much as I used to, and I’m no longer mortified for people to know I’m a Christian and I will pray with anybody anywhere, but for whatever reason, I put my hand on her shoulder beside the rolls of burlap in the home decorating section of G-Street Fabrics at Bailey’s Crossroads yesterday, and I said, “Let’s pray together.” And we did.
And I asked that God might free her from this stuck place in her life. And that God might protect her son and help her mother give her a break. And I prayed that she would have joy in her life again and be freed from all the things that make her feel trapped. And then I said “Amen.”
And she handed me the burlap and now it’s in your hands.
I declare to you that Tammi the fabric store clerk, and children like Panida, and women like the concubine in the book of Judges are in your and my hands. And God has called us to set them free.
Maybe this is why this story is in the Bible – to stun us into recognizing that the world is not a safe place for many people. And if we are safe in our own little lives, and if we have joy, and if we are free to come and go as we please then we are not only blessed; we are responsible to change the lives of those who do not have these blessings.
We follow Jesus not so we will live easy, trouble-free lives. We follow Jesus because we have been called to take on the troubles of others in the image of this person we call Lord.
Has such a thing like the story of the unnamed concubine ever happened since our people left Egypt? Sadly, it happens all the time.
But we have more to do than merely discuss it. We cannot continue to look away. We are to be the anti-Gibeans. In the name of Jesus, may this be so.
[2] The word for “girl” in Hebrew is “na`arah” which can also be translated young girl, girl of marriageable age, female servant, or little girl.
[3] In Judges 19:2 the word here is “zanah” which means “acted as a harlot” or “committed fornication.”
[4] See footnote 3.
[5] The Hebrew word here is “yada`” which means have intercourse with him.”
[6] See Judges 19:1
[7] See http://www.internationalwomensday.com/first.asp
[8] Check out their ministry here: http://www.ijm.org/ourwork/whatwedo
[9] Luke 10:38-42
[10] Matthew 26:6-13
[11] Matthew 14:23-28
[12] John 4:7-30
[13] Mathew 26:15
[14] See Psalm 69:11, Job 16:15
[15] Isaiah 61:1
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12 comments:
Wow,informative and powerful. I wish I could have skipped and went over to your service
best explanation I have heard for this story...
'Why is this story in the Bible?
Because it shows what happens when we don’t care."
Thanks for blogging on this story, too.
I confess, however, that I am not entirely sure that the concubine's father valued his daughter's owner over his daughter. It seemed to me that he was trying to delay their departure...was trying to get the Levite to stay. I keep wondering if the concubine's father was himself poor and powerless, and was trying the only way he knew how to protect his daughter.
After all, he did take her back in when she left the first time. And he seemed to want to keep her close. I think that there is more to the story than meets the eye.
Thank you Jan for your message. I have passed it on to many of my sisters in the faith. A startling message...but one of hope too (if we pay attention and do something with our faith).
@Lainie Petersen I like this take on the father. It didn't occur to me that he was stalling to keep the daughter safe. (He seemed a little too back-slappy to me.) Thanks.
great sermon, Jan. Thanks.
A day later, and your sermon remains with me. I'm sure it was a difficult one to preach, but I also think it's a vital one, reminding us to look up and out on the world around us. Thanks, Jan.
Wow! This was so moving! I wish I could have heard it preached live. Thank you for reminding us and for sharing your heart with us.
-Michelle
Jan,
I am speachless.
I want to talk to you more about this.
That was so amazing.
Bless you!
kim
I love this....bless you!
Wow, Jan - that was amazing. Thank you for connecting IJM to the story - we appreciate it.
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